


The Other Sketchbook

by greenteeth



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Fluff, M/M, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 14:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3572693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenteeth/pseuds/greenteeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Art is Steve's happy place. Bucky likes seeing Steve happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Sketchbook

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mthenefarious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mthenefarious/gifts).



> This was for the prompt: Steve surreptitiously sketches nudes of Bucky while Bucky sleeps next to him. Bucky isn't really asleep. 
> 
> I think I wandered a bit. I hope this is enjoyable for mthenefarious and for everyone else.

Bucky's first thought was that he was a little cold. His next thought was that he was a lot naked. After that his sense of smell woke up enough to tell him he was in the tiny apartment he shared with Steve instead of military barracks. Hearing told the rest of his brain to shut up because something important was going on. Listening hard Bucky heard the delicate skritch and slide of a soft pencil making long strokes across paper. He had to lock every muscle in his jaw to keep from grinning at the sound. Steve was sketching. Steve hadn't opened his sketchbook in months as far as Bucky knew. Art had always been Steve’s happy place and his Stevie hadn’t been happy for a long time. 

When they were kids sketching meant Steve was getting better after whatever illness had laid him out that time. He drew when he was well enough to pester his mother into letting him play outside but still too weak to join Bucky and the other boys tearing around the neighborhood. Those days Bucky would always wind up back at Steve’s side 10 times a day happy to have Steve show him a drawing of this dog or those old men at the store. 

When they moved in together Bucky had joked that he was glad to be moving in with someone who could do something to cover up the god awful wallpaper in their new place. And when they’d finally become more than friends sharing an apartment Steve had started to draw little dreams, a big apartment with flowers running wild in the window box, a well matched pair of dancers whirling away to unheard music, a pair of rings tucked in the corner of a page. 

Bucky had wrapped his arms around Steve and smiled into his hair when he saw those. “You ever draw me?”

“Why’d I draw a picture of your ugly mug?” Steve asked.

Bucky could tell just from the tone of voice that Steve wasn’t being straight with him. “Ugly? I’ll have you know that I’m the envy of men everywhere. Let’s see ‘em, Rogers.”

“You want to see pictures I didn’t draw?” 

“Yup, those ones.” Resting his cheek on Steve’s head he had hammed it up. “Are you going to tell me, me, your oldest friend, that you never once looked at me and thought ‘now there is a man that needs to be immortalized on paper so that all that come after may know that the pinnacle of masculine perfection has graced this earth’?”

“Nope.”

“Steve.” Bucky had tried to clap his hands to his chest to show how wounded he was by Steve’s rejection. All he had accomplished was pulling Steve tighter to him.

Steve licked his lip. “I may have done a sketch or two.”

“I knew it. Can I see?” 

“Fine.” Bucky had pouted outrageously as Steve pulled away from him. “They’re in my other sketchbook.”

“Other sketchbook?” Bucky had asked trailing after Steve to the bedroom. Bucky hadn’t known Steve had another sketchbook. Steve had dug around under his bed and Bucky, flush with young love, had taken the opportunity to enjoy the sight of his wiggling hips. Steve had pulled out the book and flipped it open sharply letting the pages fall open in his lap. 

Bucky had taken his sweet time looking over Steve’s face, his chest and finally the book. Well, that was certainly a drawing of him but not so much a drawing of his clothes. On the page he was sprawled out with one arm flung over his face, asleep and naked in Steve’s bed. Bucky had laughed. “You scoundrel, taking advantage of my poor tired state.”

Ignoring his own blush Steve had said “It’s not my fault you sleep like the dead.”

“So, do you want to draw me while I’m awake?” Bucky had asked already undoing the buttons of his shirt. 

Steve told him tartly. “You, me and your mother all know you can’t stay still long enough for that. Anyway, if I have you awake and naked, I have better things to do than draw.”

Bucky never did get Steve to draw him while he was awake but there were a dozen times he had woken up to find Steve putting his pencil down and taking Bucky into his arms with a grin. Those had been good days. 

Then America entered the war and Bucky saw less and less of that grin and neither hide nor hair of either sketchbook. Now when he woke Steve would already be up and in the living room listening to the latest news from the front with a tiny unhappy line between his eyebrows. Steve had snapped the pencil he was holding in half when he told Bucky about his 4F. When Bucky dropped the sketchbook into Steve’s lap the evening after, Steve had just set it aside hunching over his newspaper without a word. 

Then Bucky was drafted and there were no more mornings waking up to Steve, let alone the gentle sound of pencil on paper. No more mornings to pull Steve close, letting his eyelashes trail across the skin of Steve’s stomach. Just too early mornings with a bunch of guys he didn’t know and hadn’t volunteered for this either. When he had gotten leave before being shipped to Europe he had hightailed it back to Brooklyn to find his best guy picking fights, ornerier than a bear with a sore head. 

The night before when Bucky had left the Stark Expo he wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing. He was even less sure as the evening went on and Steve didn’t join him and the girls at the dance hall. Bucky had begged off as early as he could and worried at every street corner that Steve and his temper had gotten into more trouble. He had finally relaxed when he saw Steve’s jacket hanging inside the door of their apartment. 

Stepping into the bedroom, he hadn’t quite known what to do. Steve had been asleep in his own bed and as much as Bucky would have loved to climb in behind him and relearn the knobs of Steve’s spine he wasn’t sure of his welcome. He had decided to sleep in his own bed on the other side of the room to give Steve space if he wanted it. He also had decided to sleep naked as an invitation even Steve couldn’t miss. 

Now Steve was sketching him. Naked had been a great choice. As surreptitiously as possible Bucky relaxed his face back into the smooth mask of sleep. He almost lost it and smiled when he heard the light short strokes of Steve shading a darker area of the drawing. Was he adding color to Bucky’s hair or was he adding the shadow to the sheets where they disappeared under Bucky’s hip? Either way Bucky wasn’t going to interrupt it by waking up. He focused on breathing soft and even and imagining how Steve must look on the other bed, sitting in rumpled sheets with the sketchbook propped on his knee, fingers turning grey from pencil lead. That image was enough to distract him from the chill of the room. The peaceful sound of pencil sweeping over paper kept him from scratching the hellish itch on his side. It was his last day in New York and Bucky knew that he would happily spend his last day on earth pretending to sleep if it made Steve happy. 

After who cared how long Bucky heard the pencil tap the side of the sketchbook. “Are you going to lay around all day? I thought you army boys got up at the crack of dawn.”

Bucky stretched so he could look at Steve properly scratching that damn itch along the way. “Who am I to interrupt a great artist at work?” Steve looked away with a smile the same way he used to whenever Bucky complemented his art. “Hey, I’m sure that’s real fine art right there. Good enough to put in a gallery.”

“Sure, Buck.”

Bucky flopped on to his back making a grand gesture at the ceiling. “Up there with all the other nudes. It would have its own little sign, Steve Rogers, 1943, title: Buck, naked.”

Steve mouthed the last two words along with him adding a fond eye roll for a joke that they had shared a hundred times. And Bucky laughed a little louder and a little longer than he should but he was here and Steve was happy and maybe for today things could be good again. 

Bucky decided to press his luck that Steve’s good mood would last. "We should go dancing tonight."

"Didn't you get enough of that last night?" Steve asked without sounding at all reproachful. 

"Not with my best guy. Com'on just you and me. We'll go to Ben's and find a quiet corner so I don't have to share you with any joes looking to cut in." Bucky wheedled. It would be a risk but today it would be worth it. 

Steve snorted picking up his pencil again to add another line to his drawing. “Yeah. I’d like that.”


End file.
